chainsaws tearing through morning
like it owes them money.
My next-door neighbor’s tree,
trimmed every year,
is under the blade again.
By noon the air smells green,
and the street’s a confetti
of leaves and twigs.
All of it ends up in front of my house,
a small forest of what used to be.
Then the wood chipper starts.
A crewman goggles up and
pins the branches in,
one by one,
feeding a machine that eats memory.
It must be an awful day for the birds,
their sky collapsing,
their songs scattered like leaves.
You can almost hear them asking
where the world has gone.
A Fourth of Birds,
the air bursting with sound and fear,
a fright that puts the dogs’ Independence Day
in chains.
By evening, the street is clean.
Only sawdust and silence remain.
No owls, no woodpeckers, no sparrows,
just the inhalation
of something that used to sing.
But they will return.
They always do.
You can cut the branches,
you can down the tree,
but none would topple
their spirit.
They will find a wire,
or a fence post,
or the lip of a roof
still warm from the sun.
They will call out,
hesitant at first,
then louder,
until the world remembers
how to sing again.
